Who Owns the Story?

You’ve decided that yes, you’re going to do the scary thing. There in the mirror of the written page you’re going to expose yourself—warts be damned.

Read on to find out what our really fun writing prompts are at the end of this intriguing post written by my collaborator Stephanie Farrow and myself.

During my Poem-of-the-Day series on Riehlife we’ll have a mixture of named poets & others just like the rest of us. My friend Stephanie Farrow in Albuquerque, New Mexico chooses the Big Name Poets. She sends her picks out via email every day. I’ll be scooping up some of these. Here’s what Stephanie has to say. –JGR

Spring has sprung, April’s here, and–at last!–it’s National Poetry Month. What a delightful excuse to seed the universe, or at least one small part of it, with poems.

I’ll be sending out one poem a day for the month. Their common element is that I like or admire them for one reason or another. Lyrical
language, clever word play, humor, provocative theme, beautiful imagery–any of these is enough to warrant passing the poem on to someone else who might enjoy it.

Let’s start with Billy Collins, a firm believer in the fine art of foolishness and keeping things in perspective.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

In our column “Creative Catalyst” on Story Circle Network’s blog Telling Her Stories: The Broad View, we have posted the first two of a three-part cycle on collaboration:

5.1 Collaboration: How to Make It Work
5.2 Collaboration: Trust Floats the Boat

What makes a good collaboration?

Janet: In part one we talked about how we met and began our collaboration that drew on:

1) Shared life and work experiences that formed a personal and professional bond between us;
2) Knowing and liking each other. Work as an extension of friendship and the other way around.
3) Interlocking Strengths & Skills

What else has worked for us?

#4 The same only different: Balance

Stephanie: We’re good partners. In addition to the complementary set of skills we bring to the work, we have different personalities and ways of working. That somehow balances out what we bring to our work together.

You’re more directive than I am. You jump right in to shape a situation where I tend to work around whatever is going on. You’re more “out there” while I’m more reserved. You’re the frog, leaping into the water with abandon. I’m the one on the shore delicately dipping in a toe before making the decision to enter or not. We both see the whole picture, yet enjoy analyzing. I like to take a problem or piece of writing apart and make it work better as a whole. Imprecision irritates me.

#5 A shared sense of purpose, work ethic, discipline, humor, and desire for quality work.

Janet: It was sad really…when Stephanie became irritated by my imprecision.

Stephanie: Yes! This phrase of ours has helped us gain perspective and laughter over the years. Because of our time together, we can use verbal shorthand—no explanation necessary—because we have a history

Janet: It’s like a long-married couple who speak in code. Now that is really sad!
Carol Lloyd categorizes several different types of creativity. What I like about our collaborative relationship is that we not only have differences, but also over-lapping strengths.
We both are good at brainstorming and get a kick out of it, but that’s probably the phase of the creative process that’s my best shot. Carol calls that generative creativity.

While I’m analytical, you are even more so. We can both shape and structure, but you are clearer, pared down, and rigorous in what to leave out and when to push for clarification. In Carol’s term, I see you as a “realizer.” You move our work into form and hold it to a high standard. On my own I tend to be rather a seat of the pants gal and improvise as I go along.

#6 Knowing and Honoring Needs

Stephanie: “Rigorous”—I like that word. One of the reasons we can work together so intensely is that our communication is mainly by phone and email. This lessens the intensity so it’s not so overwhelming. That has made it possible to meet for longer periods of time—and sustain our working relationship over time.

We both find face-to-face interactions tiring. We’re good about honoring that. When we’re together for more than just a quick visit, we build in alone time to have a cup of tea, relax and rest. The sensitivity of good friendship.

Janet: You are more inward that I am, but we both need that rest to recover and regroup. We share many of the INFP [Meyers-Briggs Introverted-Intuitive-Feeling-Perceiving], and those qualities and patterns helped us tune in more accurately and with greater understanding. Since the INFP profile is only 1 percent of the population, we’re lucky to have found that in a working partner.

Stephanie: Only 1%. We are rara avis indeed!

Janet: The underlying qualities in our relationship that melds our collaboration are a shared sense of purpose, humor, desire for quality work, a shared work ethic and discipline. We’ve both done extensive work for hire which requires working to client specifications, on deadline and within budget. These common values yield good communication, expectations, and trust.

#7 Truth, Trust, and Resolving Conflict

Let’s talk about trust a bit. What is the nature of trust? How is it built? How does it feed into collaboration? How is it sustained?

Stephanie: True trust can come only through experience. Unless you’ve done things together, how do you know if you can count on someone? The more you interact the more comfortable you’re able to feel.
Trust also involves being able to be truthful without feeling as if you’re putting yourself in danger of being knocked down. Nothing worthwhile ever proceeds with some sort of snag, so it’s critical to be able to talk about the snags and figure out what to do about them.
Without trust true collaboration isn’t possible. If you’re holding back because of unease, then it isn’t collaboration. It becomes a hierarchical work situation in which one holds power over the other. Trustworthiness itself sustains trust. Being trustworthy means doing what you’ve promised, respecting your partner, and resolving differences when they do arise.

Janet: Yup. Yup. Resolving conflict—either through exploring it directly or just laughing about it—is vital. And, yes, for us being willing to stick with it has allowed trust. I feel secure because I believe this is a friendship that will go the distance rather than crumple at the first wrinkle. Perhaps for others that security and depth can come through shorter acquaintanceship, but it’s the longevity that seals it.

Stephanie: Yes, stick-to-it-tiv-ness.

Janet: Yup.

www.riehlife.com/2010/01/30/making-collaboration-work-part-1-with-womens-memoir-duo-kendra-bonnett-matilda-butler

www.riehlife.com/2010/01/30/making-collaboration-work-part-2-womens-memoir-duo-kendra-bonnett-matilda-butler/

storycircle.typepad.com/scn/2010/01/collaboration.html

In our first 2-part interview Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler told us how they met and shared five tips for successful collaboration.

How Stephanie & I met and began our collaboration

Today we offer the first of a second two-part interview on collaboration between Stephanie Farrow and myself. It’s a working relationship within the context of a long friendship that’s been going on for 37 years, longer than many marriages.

Stephanie and I have collaborated on many writing and training projects. Most recently we’ve joined up to write our Creative Catalyst column for Telling Her Stories, the Story Circle Network blog.
In our column from February-March-April we’re running a 3-post Creative Catalyst cycle.

5.1 Collaboration: How to Make It Work
5.2 Collaboration: Trust Floats the Boat

Stephanie lives in New Mexico while I live in St. Louis. We haven’t seen each other for four years. Our collaboration takes place via phone and email.

For this interview we experimented chatting by Gmail. Our phone time tends toward delightful jazz conversations as we branch out discursively and then pull it back in to a point. We found we enjoyed the Gmail technology to capture conversation. It allowed time for on-the-spot reflection.

We first met in Ghana in 1973 when we were both teaching in Peace Corps. She lived in the South while I lived in the North. When I traveled to Kumasi during school breaks, we’d spend time visiting over tea. Those conversations began building the foundation of our collaboration back in the United States in New Mexico, and then continued when I moved to California and then to Missouri.

#1 Shared experience to build upon.

Janet: Stephanie, I remember sitting in your house outside Kumasi visiting and sipping tea as we first got to know each other. It seems to me that beginning started building the foundation of our collaboration.
Stephanie: I remember first meeting you when we got in country the first day. You and your husband came to our room and we lounged on the beds. Everything seemed so new—Africa, that is—and here you were—old Africa hands with experience in Botswana.
Janet: With your perspective of coming from Honduras and Guatemala, you and your husband John quickly became old hands yourselves. You spoke flawless French and Spanish. Coming from Botswana we knew Setswana. Those two perspectives gave us a point to start our long conversation of 37 years.

Stephanie: You’re right, in some ways Ghana didn’t seem strange at all—it was just different—another 3rd World country. I think that previous experience made it easier for me to adjust and feel at home straight away.

When you share an overseas experience of any sort—even just going to France to visit the Eiffel Tower or whatever—it changes your perspective on the world. Others who’ve been outside the country understand what this means in a way others can’t.

#2 Knowing and liking each other. Work as an extension of friendship and the other way around.

Stephanie: I can hear your typing over the speaker phone. It sounds like there’s a demented mouse gnawing away.

Janet: Gnaw, Gnaw! We were so fortunate to meet up again in New Mexico in 1979 when we’d both been back in the States a short time going through cultural transition and getting settled in the United States. That reconnection became one of the most important shaping influences of my life. For one, it gave me one of the longest-term friends I’ve ever had in my life.

Stephanie: It’s rare these days to have such a long-term friend. Connections seem much more tenuous these days. We’re such a mobile society that it’s hard to stay connected—especially those of us who don’t even stay in the country!

#3 Interlocking Strengths & Skills

Janet: In the 1980s in New Mexico working together emerged organically from our friendship and similar work interests.
You worked with a variety of nonprofit volunteer organizations—like Amigos de las Americas, Parentcraft, Partners of the Americas, and Coalition for Children. Mostly your work then centered on children and overseas, cross-cultural issues. I worked with community education and later in my consulting firm Clear Communication.

The underlying skills for us both were training and development and communication. With this bond in place we began designing and giving workshops together.

During our three years in the Kellogg Leadership Fellowship for Partners of the Americas that our relationship became closer and we collaborated more frequently as we traveled to Latin America and the Caribbean experiencing places and development issues first hand. I’d never participated in seminars like that before—or met socially with high-level officials.
Stephanie: I hadn’t experienced that before either, so our bond grew. The work we’ve done together since then sprung from that time. The joint understanding we have of the world and of each other informs our work today.

In the second part of our interview we’ll continue our discussion on how to make collaboration work.

“Art of Critique” is our keynote post in this cycle of three.

Stephanie Farrow collaborates with me in writing our Creative Catalyst column for Story Circle Network’s blog: “Telling Her Stories.”

Stephanie says: Unfortunately, April has only 30 days, which means only 30 poems-a-day, and there are so many more that deserve to be promulgated far and wide. As David Sedaris says in the introduction to Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, “It’s the writers who make it hard. Them and their damned excellence.”

Let’s begin as we did last year with a cautionary poem from Billy Collins to keep this poetry business in perspective.
_______________________________________

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins
The Apple that Astonished Paris

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Today at 9 p.m. CST (my time!) for 60 minutes check out:

The Singing Office
Animal Shelter vs. School Bus Drivers

Joey Fatone (N’SYNC) and Mel B. (Spice Girls) are on a fun mission to discover hidden talent in workplaces across America. Mel B. is searching at the SPCALA while Joey scours the Pupil Transportation Cooperative.

Annemieke Farrow, daughter of my New Mexico long time friends Stephanie and John Farrow, makes her TV debut on this show, and we’ll all be glued as if it were the Oscars.

I’ve known Annemieke since she was a baby. She’s made a brave 180 degree turn in her life moving from 1) a Broadway musical career of dancing and singing and acting in musicals and Shakespeare…playing Reporter #2 in Spider-Man 2…to….training dogs; and 2) from NYC to LA; and 3) from long hair to short hair, as I recall first seeing her.

Now that’s what I call a PORTABLE PORTFOLIO!

Such a capacity for change and strength with flexibility leaves me applauding in the aisles with the popcorn sliding off my lap. You can be sure I’ll be there tonight, and I hope you’ll join me along with millions of other viewers.